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Aston Villa have made a strong start to the Premier League season despite three consecutive defeats. Up until the first 3-0 defeat a few weeks ago, Villa were flying high in the table in the second place. They suffered another 3-0 defeat, this time against Chelsea – before losing 2-0 against Manchester City before the international break. These defeats have lowered their expectations for the season once again. Villa are 10th in the table after seven matches. Scoring goals has been a major issue for the club. It seems that no improvement since been made in this regard over the last few years.

Aston Villa’s strong start to the season has seen manager Paul Lambert rewarded with a new contract extension, which will see him stay at the club until 2018. The former Norwich City manager has been facing a lot of pressure in recent seasons following his failure to get Villa closer to European qualification positions. One of the few British clubs to have won the European cup, Villa are no longer challenging close to the top of the table due to the budgetary constraints. The club were almost relegated in the last two seasons only for an improvement towards the end of the season.

Chris Coleman has said that if he makes the Wales national football team qualify for the Euro Championships of 2016, it would be the biggest achievement that he can ever have in his career as manager.
Coleman, who has had stints as manager at clubs like Fulham and Real Sociedad, reckons that even if he wins the European Cup with some club in future, he would not get the same kind of satisfaction that he would get if Wales makes it to the Euro 2016.
Speaking in a programme, Coleman said, “Even Champions League glory would not give me as much happiness as Wales’ qualification for Euro 2016 would.”

The Aston Villa boss, Paul Lambert, has big expectations with his new signing Joe Cole. He believes that the former English player is still capable of competing at the top level.

Cole, who is 32 year old at the moment, has recently signed for Villa. He had actually been offered a big amount of money to join the Major League Soccer, the American league, but, he turned it down.

Not many players especially at this age would have rejected such an offer, but, Cole did it and he got heaps of praise from Lambert for that.

Talking to the reporters a couple of days ago about Cole, Lambert said, “Joe is one of those guys who don’t care about the cash that much. He is just looking to show the world that he has still got what it takes to compete at this level.”